re: Go see Lincoln the Movie and get Grounded(Posted by AlaTiger on 11/20/12 at 9:27 am to Mike da Tigah)

quote:The only thing truly lost is the right to choose your own government and rulers as spelled out in this country's very own Declaration of Independence from Britain. Also lost, or rather slowly eroded since was state sovereignty and the concept of states governing themselves without the feds using their very own money as a hostage to be used against them if they don't fall in line.

I actually agree with all of that, Mike. Like I said, if not for the human slavery issue, I would be very sympathetic to the Confederacy's raison d'etre and its right to secede. I also see the Constitutional genius of having state's rights as a check and balance to the power of the Federal Government. It is the slavery thing that delegitimizes the cause of the South and trying to whitewash it over the past 150 years is the true lost cause.

re: Go see Lincoln the Movie and get Grounded(Posted by AlaTiger on 11/20/12 at 9:32 am to Gmorgan4982)

quote:Gmorgan4982 Go see Lincoln the Movie and get Grounded Can I be against slavery and against starting a useless war and against putting those who speak out against the government in jail?

Yes, of course. I get what you are saying. I am speaking in light of the "Lincoln is a tyrant" talk when you consider the context of what he was dealing with. If he had done those things and there was no war, you would be absolutely correct. Woodrow Wilson and FDR did some really shady stuff during WWI and WWII as well. I am not fan's of them either, but the context is important.

I do not have a quarrel with the way many see Lincoln's treatment of the Constitution. But, we do not know how he would have handled Reconstruction and if he took extreme means to win the war and preserve the Union, I cannot say I blame him very much.

The South overreacted. If they had not seceded and gone to war, they could have kept their way of life and their slaves until it would have died a natural death by around World War I - by the 1920's at the latest. Industrialization would have killed it off finally. But, they were so afraid of losing power that they acted stupidly, at least regarding their own self-interests. Lincoln did not have a lot of choices, in my opinion.

It's amazing the amount of neo-Confederates there are on this board. You have convinced yourselves that the South was by no means in the wrong and that Lincoln was the tyrant. You have convinced yourselves that slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the war and everything to do with tariffs. You have convinced yourselves that Lincoln was a tyrant who shredded the Constitution without being willing to see why he did what he did because you think the war he waged against the South was illegal and tyrannical anyway.

I think a lot of you have a mental block in your brains that keep you from reconciling your family's history with slavery. Here's my history. My father's ancestors were slave owners. To this day, there are African-American "members" of my family whose ancestors were either conceived in the Master's master bedroom or took the name of my ancestors when they were freed or escaped from the plantation.

But you know what? I don't care. That was 150 years ago. Their sins do not define who I am. I don't go looking for reasons to justify why they took up arms against the United States. I don't need to lie to myself about some stupid tariff that was passed in 1828 and became a non-issue by the mid-1830s. You should stop this denial and actually acknowledge what the primary cause of the war was. Bottom line: there were many differences between North and South in the years leading up to Lincoln's election. But all of those differences would have been moot if not for one issue: slavery.

re: Go see Lincoln the Movie and get Grounded(Posted by Mike da Tigah on 11/20/12 at 9:38 am to AlaTiger)

quote:I actually agree with all of that, Mike. Like I said, if not for the human slavery issue, I would be very sympathetic to the Confederacy's raison d'etre and its right to secede. I also see the Constitutional genius of having state's rights as a check and balance to the power of the Federal Government. It is the slavery thing that delegitimizes the cause of the South and trying to whitewash it over the past 150 years is the true lost cause.

It's never been at the heart of the true railroad job to me, and I really wish widgets were the focus because the real issue would not be so damn clouded so people couldn't see it.

Truth be know though, if slaves weren't even an issue one way or the other, the union would still have mustere troops and invaded the south because of their potential lost cause, or rather loss in revenue and geography, but mostly revenue and the mouth of the Mississippi Rive in NOLA being lost. That's one thing that fueled the need to shed so much blood. It most certainly wasn't the Union's desire to slay their own for the plight of the blacks, not the same who refused them entrance into their states. It was money, or the loss of it. That's why the revolutionists who were once very big on freedom to choose their own government and rulers became the king who refused to allow the rebels to leave without a blood bath.

quote:The fact remains that New York and Boston Harbor were the two biggest slave ports. The North, Yankees were the ones that sailed ships down to Africa, purchased slaves then resold them in America.

You are correct that New York and Boston were the two biggest slave ports, but you fail to mention that this was true pre-United States. Not only that, but the North American-International Slave Trade ended in 1808 - decades before the outbreak of civil war.

quote:Then there's the emancipation proclamation originally only pertaining to confederate states and not the union states. Which seems to contradict yankee claims of fighting the war to free the slaves.

The war was not fought to free slaves but the war would not have happened if not for slavery. What can you not understand about this?

re: Go see Lincoln the Movie and get Grounded(Posted by Godfather1 on 11/20/12 at 9:50 am to AlaTiger)

quote:Why villify Lincoln and give the South that he fought against a pass? If Lincoln was wrong (and I see the merit of that argument based on what he did to the Constitution), his error must be seen in the light of what he was fighting against.

Go back and read your history.

The Emancipation Proclamation that people so herald Lincoln for was little more than a punitive measure against the South (which Lincoln never viewed as a sovereign nation despite secession). It did nothing to free the slaves in states that didn't secede.